Forty-four children (mean 3.8 years) were given three false belief, a working memory, and four language tasks (each designed to tap a different aspect of syntax or semantics), and were tested again 6 months later. Once the range of scores in the language and false belief tasks were equated, there was a bidirectional relation between language and…

The influence of cognitive growth in working memory (WM) on mathematical problem solution accuracy was examined in elementary school children (N = 353) at risk and not at risk for serious math problem solving difficulties. A battery of tests was administered that assessed problem solving, achievement, and cognitive processing (WM, inhibition,…

Children's autobiographical memory is hypothesized to be a function of their understanding of mind (Perner & Ruffman, 1995; Welch-Ross, 1995). In the context of mother-child reminiscing, children may learn about and display their understanding of mind (Nelson, 1999; Welch-Ross, 1997). We studied links among maternal reminiscing style,…

Pictures are often used by cognitive psychologists to investigate the development of cognitive functions. Different attributes of the picture, such as object or picture familiarity, word frequency, and age of acquisition, are known to correlate with naming latency and to affect memory, particularly retrieval processes. But without the use of…

Recently, young children have been allowed to testify as competent witnesses in courts of law and the testimony of a single child can be very important in sexual abuse cases. A study was conducted to examine the accuracy of nursery school children's eyewitness accounts in a naturalistic setting. Nursery school students (N=31) viewed two women, one…

Developmental changes leading to mature judgments of the relative effectiveness of verbal memory strategies were examined in 60 subjects (20 each from second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade classrooms). Subjects viewed videotapes of a female child who was given the task of remembering a set of categorizable pictures. Demonstrations of four memory…

Very little is known about the conditions under which young children acquire strategic means of remembering in natural learning environments. A promising line of research attributes the emergence of "internal remembering strategies" to formal schooling environments. Data gathered from 173 children in kindergarten through the third grade…

A Sample of 576 children participated in a study to determine the manner in which children retain narrative material, what information they retain, and the effects of sex and age upon these aspects of memory. The children, ranging in age from six to eight years, listened to a tape recorded story in individual sessions. Half of them were asked to…

Intended for graduate students in special education, the text presents seven author contributed papers dealing with theoretical issues in the field. M. Faust and W. Faust ("Cognitive Constructing: Levels of Processing and Developmental Change") consider cognitive processing from a developmental perspective. In "Memory Processes in Exceptional…

This experiment examined two processes which might account for developmental increases in accuracy in visual recognition tasks: age-related increases in efficiency of scanning during inspection, and age-related increases in the ability to make decisions systematically during test. Critical details necessary for recognition were highlighted as…

Thirty-two parent couples participated in this investigation to determine whether learning patterns established in the home environment significantly affect a child's later cognitive development in traditionally school-taught subjects. This research report outlines the methodology used in the study, explains the operational criteria for the four…

A set of studies investigated the relative importance of operative schemes and figurative (rote) memory. In Study I, 60 concrete operational children from grades 1-4 were asked to reconstruct two types of stimuli from memory. In order to separate the effects of operative and figurative skill use, learning disabled children with poor figurative…

In this study the relationship between mother's teaching style (verbal instruction vs. demonstration) and the child's performance on four memory tests was investigated. Mothers' teaching style with 9-year-old children was observed in an induced teaching situation in the home, in a Guatemalan Maya town. In the induced teaching situation, the mother…

The two studies reported here examined processes involved in learning and remembering sentences. Experiment one identified processes in sentence acquisition, and experiment two analyzed memory for sentences one week after initial learning. Subjects for the experiments were students in a college educational psychology class. The experiments…

This study investigates developmental trends in free recall, with emphasis on rehearsal processes. An overt rehearsal technique was used in which 28 children in grades 3, 6, and 8 were instructed to rehearse out loud while trying to memorize a list of unrelated nouns. Control groups at each age level received standard free recall instructions,…